Remember when cookbooks had back pages listing retailers selling hard-to-find ingredients? How pre–“acai on Aisle 6.”

It’s an understatement to say that nowadays once exotic (or simply
unheard of) items show up all over the place. Previously
only-by-mail-order ingredients like preserved lemons are as near as your
local Whole Foods.

So it felt bold during a recent run to the farmers market to bypass
the Finnish rye bread stall, the white currants, the ostrich eggs, and,
yes, the radish rattail pods, to hunt down a bunch of humble parsley.

In an artisanal-to-the-hilt world, sometimes ordinary deserves to trump preciousness.

Parsley was the one ingredient I didn’t have on hand for Salsa di
Noci, or Walnut Sauce, a recipe that uses everyday ingredients, but
whose preparation requires time and stamina, and perhaps a pair of
tweezers.

Yes, tweezers. To make a perfect Salsa de Noci, it’s critical to peel
the walnuts. And while I used my thumbnail to do the job, in hindsight,
tweezers might’ve been useful. Before you Google this dish and view the
YouTube video where the Italian chef in Arizona just dumps those
walnuts, skins and all, into the food processor, let me just tell you
that there are no shortcuts to the unique flavor and essence of this
sauce, which has only six ingredients.

There is a helpful trick to peeling walnuts. By soaking them in
boiling water, the skins loosen just enough so that a careful tug
will sometimes detach the skin. The flatter lobe side
has a relatively even peelable surface, it’s the stubborn bumpy side
that will call upon your zen kitchen skills. For two ounces, plan on a
minimum of forty minutes to peel the walnuts.

If your energy ever begins to flag, take a sip of the walnut water: That bitter taste is proof of the need to do this step.

Walnuts all peeled? Sorry, the hard work’s not over. For the parsley, it’s important to remove the stems and stalks. And I mean no
stems, which have a decidedly sharper flavor than the leaves (and is
why, as a garnish, a parsley sprig is never eaten except by those
convinced it will freshen their breath).

So hit shuffle on your music device. You can stop stemming once you have 1½ cups.

As for how to eat this stuff, dollop Salsa di Noci on salmon steaks or use it in place of pesto with fresh pasta.

The following recipe is presented in its original version. Ingredient
and cooking notes: I used curly leaf parsley; ½ cup of olive oil; and a
mini food processor, not a mortar.

“Take the skins off the shelled walnuts after pouring boiling water
over them. Pound them in a mortar. Add the parsley, after having picked
off the large and coarse stalks. Put a little coarse salt with the
parsley in the mortar—this will make it easier to pound. While reducing
the parsley and the walnuts to a paste add from time to time some of the
butter, softened or just melted by the side of the fire. Stir in the
breadcrumbs and, gradually, the oil. The result should be a thick paste,
very green; it need not be absolutely smooth, but it must be well
amalgamated. Stir in the cream or milk. Season with a little more salt
and ground pepper. A bizarre sauce, but excellent with tagliatelle, or with fish, or as a filling for sandwiches.”

***

Corey Sabourin began cooking at a young age,
later worked as a pastry chef, then decided to become a writer. He
line-edits his fiction between kitchen tasks in New York.